Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

In Chapter 15, Obama prepares to move on to the next stage of his life. Obama departs Chicago, choosing to include a three-week stopover in Europe before flying to Nairobi. As he travels through Europe and on the flight from London to Nairobi, Obama struggles with a sense of alienation from European culture and the ongoing struggles of African countries to become successful states. Traveling in these unfamiliar settings, Obama discovers in himself "a great emptiness" (301). He wonders: can the reality of Africa, which "had become an idea more than an actual place, a new promised land, full of ancient traditions and sweeping vistas, noble struggles and talking drums" (305), fill this emptiness?

No one is at the airport to meet Obama initially and his luggage has mistakenly been sent to Johannesburg. Obama is gratified, however, when a British Airways employee connects his last name to that of his father. For the first time, Obama "[feels] the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, 'Oh, you are so and so’s son'" (305). Auma arrives with an aunt to pick up Obama finally.